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Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Medhi Hassan Passes Away

Medhi Hassan, the Pakistani singer who became known as "the King of Ghazal", passed away today at the age of 84. According to the Times of India, he was admitted to the Agha Khan hospital in Karachi where he was put on a ventilator a few days before his death. He had been suffering from a lung condition and had suffered a major stroke almost a decade ago.

According to an estimate by his son Arif, Medhi Hassan sung around 20,000 songs in Urdu, Bengali, Pashto and Punjabi. Lata Mangeshkar once described his voice as the "Voice of God."

Mehdi Hassan was born on 18 July 1927 in a village in Rajasthan in India into a family of musicians. When he was 20, he migrated to Pakistan with his family after the Partition of India. He worked in a bicycle shop and as a mechanic before receiving an invitation to sing on Radio Pakistan in 1957. He sung hits for the Pakistani film industry and had fans in India including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.